When you pray, when you worship – do you go for GOD?! Surely we want to encounter GOD!? We don’t just want answers – we want the One who is the Answer. We want His face not just his hand. We don’t just pray to meditate and think things through ourselves . Of course we want understanding and revelation and strength and wisdom and answered prayer– but not for their own sake!
Tag: Prayer
Daniel Fast day one: Entering the King’s service!
We’re going through a series on Bible heroes at the moment on Sundays. Yesterday’s focus was on Daniel. If we were going to look for longevity in consistent wisdom in the Bible, I’d probably want to make a case for Daniel. Lots of other guys started out well and finished badly. Or they had a very chequered past and came through at the end. But Daniel had the kind of testimony sometimes people underplay – they feel they have to leave the church maybe and get into drugs or something so they come back having made good, then they’ll really have a testimony. I often counsel teens in church – YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT! You can have a story that says, “God has been faithful to me all my life, and he’s helped me live faithfully too.” That is a powerful story! He was just a human being like us, but Daniel’s exemplary character leave him as one of very few people in the Bible who gets 5 stars all the way through his life, one of a […]
Where are you going?
the challenge to our church to see 1000 new people come to Christ in the next two years. Sounds like quite a tall order, but 3000 were added at Pentecost in a day and here in Manchester really it just needs everyone we presently have coming to be praying, witnessing and inviting more!
Waves
8000 waves break on the shore every day. One every eight seconds.
It’s a great picture of God’s grace, love and blessing.
Financial crisis – sinister global agenda?
Without doubt this economic crisis – and the chaos that follows – will present individuals and organizations opportunities that would never otherwise be pursued during times of normality. It’s hard to not to expect anything different. After all, the firemen who are now trying to douse the flames are the same people who started the fire.
God speaks through Dreams: Walking with the King
In the dream I was stationed on duty outside a great palace like Buckingham Palace, dressed like one of the soldiers in ceremonial dress with the Busby hat on – as an ex police officer I’ve done my fair share of standing still and ‘guarding!’ Suddenly I was aware that I had a new assignment.
How much to get rid of a demon?
Following a few links, I was intrigued to stumble across demon-slayer.org These people (I don’t think you can find out who they are other than first names, but they have a great line in anonymous recommendations) will travel the world and use secret knowledge revealed to only 7 people to get rid of your demons, apparently. How do you know you have demons? Well they list ‘creepy feelings,‘ or ‘feeling like someone is pressurising you to do certain acts‘ on their SYMPTOMS page. I got that off their site! Every day now I pass a big billboard advertising the new ITV Demons programme where Philip Glenister (the guy who played Gene Hunt in Life on Mars) has some new – more other worldly opponents to take on. This stuff is on people’s minds in our culture. Now don’t get me wrong… 1) We don’t battle against flesh and blood. When we see some of the evil in the world I don’t think many of us would think it too much of a stretch to believe the Bible’s warnings of a […]
When curses are turned to blessings
Balak takes him to a place where he can only see the rubbish of the camp. (Anyone eager to point that out in your life? Guess who sent them!). It must be easy to curse when all you can see is the negative.
Thinking Bigger
that first Christmas Jesus came to a very busy place, where people were gathering and crammed in! We are us taking the real message of what Christmas is all about to where people are – not where we’d want them to come.
Because of You
…we started talking about there is something to thank God for even in the hard times, sharing about when we were boys etc. I remembered a really hard time my Mum and Dad must have been going through when I was about 11 or 12. I was still at the age then when I thought desperate prayer might just work